Finding Connection by Disconnecting on the Camino de Santiago
have you ever been in a room
full of people but felt completely alone
i mean besides with close friends and
family how often do we form deep
connections
with the people we cross paths with
i’ll tell you now the answer is not
enough
not even close and we have no idea what
we’re missing
until recently i had no idea what a deep
connection with a stranger felt like
and if i’m being honest i just never
thought about it
i’m a generation z teenager you’ve
probably seen us sitting together
with our faces buried in our phones
we’ve grown up with screens all around
us i never realized
i wasn’t having meaningful connections
even with some of my closest friends
all that changed for me the summer
before i started seventh grade
i went for a walk on something called
the camino de santiago
a pilgrimage where i learned what real
connections are
and how your life is so much richer when
you realize what you’ve been missing
pilgrims have been walking the camino de
santiago since the middle ages
it’s made up of a series of paths that
end in the spanish city of santiago de
campostella
at the tomb of the apostle saint james
today one of the most popular communal
paths is called the camino frances
which translates to the french way in
english
this specific trail starts in southern
france and heads west over to the
pyrenees mountains and across northern
spain
its total distance is around 485 miles
and it passes through major cities small
towns and villages
all along the way this was the route i
took
when i went on my camino journey
pilgrims today walk the camino for
different reasons some may walk for
spiritual reasons
others may do it for the challenge but
many use this journey to find their way
after suffering perhaps an emotional or
challenging event in their life
no matter what though the camino is a
chance to reflect
and find meaning and direction in life
i remember sitting on my couch at home
my dad started giving me
what i would describe as the worst sales
pitch
ever here’s what he said you’ll be
walking 12 to 15 miles
every day sometimes in the rain with
lots of hills
it’s going to be hot your feet are gonna
hurt and you’re probably going to get
blisters
you can take anything you want though as
long as you
carry it all day also
i don’t know exactly where we’re going
to sleep at night but you’re going to
want to bring
earplugs because apparently tired
pilgrims snore like freight trains
you’re gonna have to talk to adults all
the time
oh and you’re gonna have to wash your
underwear in the sink every night
now i don’t know what gave it away but
this seemed
absolutely horrible it was like every
teenager’s worst nightmare
but something else sparked my interest
this unique opportunity may not come my
way again
so i was left with two options i could
stay home for the summer
and do what most teenage boys do so
binge watch netflix and play video games
or i could get out of my comfort zone
and see what this crazy camino was all
about
my dad wanted me to know that it was
going to be challenging
but that along the way i might learn a
lot about myself and seen experience
some pretty cool things i thought it was
going to be a fun adventure
and it really was but what made my
camino experience
absolutely amazing and unforgettable
were the incredible connections i had
with the people i met there
i met people from all over the world and
of all walks of life
for example i met a man from syria who
had lost his son that was my age in the
country’s civil war
and through tears he told me about their
story
i got to share the trail with a woman
who was singing amazing grace in korean
and i surprised her when i started
singing in english as we were walking
together
now we couldn’t understand each other’s
language and we could not carry a tune
but we made each other smile one of my
favorite stories about connections
happened on a day that my dad and i had
been walking uphill in the rain for a
couple of hours
as we were walking we came across an
australian woman who was pushing a baby
stroller up the rocky trail
to give her a break i offered to help
push the stroller to the top
in that way she can hold an umbrella
over her husband’s head who was pushing
a second baby stroller up the trail
we learned that their names were sally
and phillip and that they were on a
mission to push their two small children
over 485 miles across spain
we walked with this family for the rest
of the day stay in the same town that
night
and even had dinner together our
conversation stretched into the next day
i learned a ton about australian history
but my favorite part
was when philip shared he was a
beekeeper back home
i was so fascinated by this and i had a
million questions that he answered in
one of the coolest accents
they even taught me some australian
slang like the words bloke
sheila and good eye and in turn
i taught him the proper use of the
southern phrase y’all
we became a part of each other’s camino
family and we would come
in and out of each other’s lives all
along the way
like the many other pilgrims i connected
with along my camino
whenever i came into a town or village
and ran into them again
it was like reuniting with long lost
friends
the bonds we made were really deep and
we still keep in touch
there was another day on the camino
after walking for a couple of hours in
the sun
that my dad and i came across the ruins
of a huge
church we stopped to rest and refill our
water bottles
and as we step through these large gates
i realized
we were standing in what used to be the
inside of a large cathedral
the walls towed around us but the roof
was almost completely gone
i was then greeted by a smiling italian
woman named mona
she was a volunteer that helped programs
that wanted to spend the night here
she explained to me that this place was
called san antone
and was built in the middle ages as a
church and hospital for pilgrims
nowadays most pilgrims either walk on by
these ruins
or probably decide not to stay at them
because there’s no electricity
there’s no hot water there’s no wi-fi
and there’s no air conditioning but you
see
none of that mattered to me because i
was in awe that i had the chance to
spend the night
in the ruins of a thousand-year-old
church
only two other pilgrims chose to stay
for that night there was a man from the
netherlands named geiss
and a young woman from finland named
saga
over about the next 12 hours i got to
know these people better than a lot of
my friends back home
i just felt like i had known him for
years saga
taught me how to find and prepare an
edible plant called stinging nettle
then we all cook supper and we ate
together by candlelight
after sharing stories around the dinner
table we gathered firewood
and built a campfire right where the
altar would have stood 900 years ago
with no modern day distractions we just
opened up
and shared from the heart we talked for
hours into the night
and we were just strangers from totally
different backgrounds
yet we found real connections when our
paths crossed on the camino
to this day it blows my mind how close
you are to missing this entire
experience
meaning mona saga and geiss have been
chosen just to walk on by these ruins
i still keep in touch with all of them
mona shares recipes with me
and i send her pictures of all the
dishes i cook guys
he encourages me from halfway around the
world and saga
even came to stay with my family in the
united states
while she was here i got to take her
trick-or-treating on halloween for her
very first time
which she said was one of the craziest
things she’s ever seen
when i got back home i went through
withdrawal
i began to realize that i had never
taken the time or in fact
really make an effort to connect with
others in a deep meaningful way
like i did on the camino every single
one of us
are on our own camino called life we all
start at birth
and will all end in the same final
destination
no two pilgrims have the same experience
even though we share the same stretch of
trail
because we bring our own unique
individual perspectives
these differences are what make our
stories better
a library filled with a million books
that are all the same book
is not worth going into we should want
our stories to be different
because that is what is interesting and
fun
we are those library books and i want my
book
to be filled with great chapters and
unique characters
we are each at different points along
our camino of life
sometimes we’re going to share the trail
for a while but other times
it’s just a small moment we can choose
to walk in silence
or we can connect with the pilgrims
we’re lucky enough to share the trail
with
these connections can be one of the most
enriching
and joyous things about our journey
through life
to experience deep connections we have
to put down distractions
and open up our hearts and our minds at
the end of our lives
i doubt we’re going to look back and say
man i wish i’d watched more tv
no what we’ll say is that we’re glad we
made those memorable connections with
others
along our communal of life if we can all
just take a moment
and truly connect with those whose past
we cross
a whole wonderful world will open up to
us
we have to stop chasing things that
don’t matter like
material things or the opinions of
people who don’t really care about us
life isn’t about how many followers we
have or how many likes we get
we tend to focus on things in the future
at the expense of missing what is
happening
right here in front of us if we keep
moving the goal line
we can’t appreciate the moments that are
passing us by
this makes life go by way too fast
life it’s about the journey make it the
best communion you can
choose to deeply connect with the
pilgrims you’re lucky enough to share
the trail with
i wish you all a good journey a buen
camino
you